Objectives: Participation in organised extracurricular social activities (OESAs) can provide wide-ranging positive developmental benefits for children. This study investigated whether participation and experiences differ for children aged 4- to 12-years with a developmental language disorder (DLD) compared to their typical language developing…

Maternal substance use is a pressing public health issue that confers risk for maternal health, the parent-infant relationship, and child development. Integrated interventions that jointly address maternal substance use and child development have shown promise for enhancing child outcomes. No research to date has focused exclusively on the…

The 30 million word gap refers to the disparity in early language exposure between low socioeconomic status (SES) children and their higher SES peers, a gap that is thought to negatively impact children's language development and future academic success. Although many early intervention approaches have proven effective in promoting language…

The early childhood stage is a time of basic foundation in which children are engaged in pretend play and creative activities. The objective of this study was to explore the role of pretend play on the creativity development of preschool children. Data were collected from four purposefully selected preschool children (two male and two female)…

An emerging body of literature suggests that early motor skills may be a key predictor of language development in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, characteristics of subject groups, targeted skill areas and their assessment tools, and methodological approaches significantly vary across existing studies. This scoping review…

This article considers the realm of knowledge in early childhood education (ECE); what knowledge is valued, and how different types of knowledge position children and educators. To this end, two different examples of practice informed by different types of knowledge are provided: one from an educator working in a long day care service (Duncan) and…

Error-monitoring is a crucial cognitive process that enables us to adapt to the constantly changing environment. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) plays a vital role in error-monitoring, and its prolonged maturation suggests that it can be influenced by experience-dependent plasticity. To explore this possibility, we collected morphometric…

This study explored the impacts of enactment and motor imagery on working memory for instructions in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), children with intellectual disability (ID) and typically developing (TD) children. The participants were asked to hear (hearing condition), imagine enacting (motor imagery condition) and actually enact…

According to the failure model (Patterson & Capaldi, 1990), peer rejection is the intermediary link between problem behaviors and internalizing symptoms. The present study tested the model with 464 monozygotic and same-sex dizygotic twin pairs (234 female, 230 male dyads). Teacher-reported reactive aggression and internalizing symptoms, and…

Sensory learning can be traced back to ancient Greek times, and the sense of touch holds multiple types of benefits for classroom music learning. Touch is also a prerequisite for children's future intellectual and social development. Between ages three and seven, a child's physical and perceptual development is in a formational stage. Despite…

The mediation effect of posttraumatic perception between self-esteem and PTSD severity among college student veterans (N = 64) were investigated. The results of the investigation indicated a significant relationship between self-esteem and PTSD severity. The total effect between self-esteem and PTSD severity showed a statistically significant…

The objective of this doctoral capstone was to create and conduct a five-part online educational series for caregivers of children ages 0-5 about the impact sensory processing differences (SPD) has on occupational participation and performance, as well as how to navigate sensory-related responses (SRRs) on a daily basis. SPD and SRRs are complex…

This study investigated whether infants encode better the features of a briefly occluded object if its movements are specified simultaneously by vision and audition than if they are not (data collected: 2017-2019). Experiment 1 showed that 10-month-old infants (N = 39, 22 females, White-English) notice changes in the visual pattern on the object…

Early detection of autism spectrum condition is crucial for children to maximally benefit from early intervention. The study examined a machine learning model predicting the increased likelihood for autism from wellness records from 0 to 24 months. The study included 591,989 non-autistic and 12,846 autistic children. A gradient boosting model with…

The first years of life are an optimal time for developing motor competence. However, the evidence regarding motor competence in early childhood is fragmented and needs to be clearly synthesized and presented. To establish effective evidence-based decision making in research, practice, and policy for the early years, this expert statement, on…